1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to electronic design automation and more particularly to behavioral-synthesis tools provided on a pay-per-use basis over the Internet.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Silicon chip usage has increased dramatically in recent years. Multi-million gate application-specific integrated circuits (ASIC""s) are being used in all types of applications, e.g., mobile phones, networking equipment, DVD players, etc. But many designers of such complex systems are using outdated electronic design automation (EDA) tools and methodologies from the mid-1980""s, when chip sizes ranged between 50K and 100 K gates. Design teams now spend an inordinate amount of time trying to get many point tools to work together. These problems, coupled with manpower shortages and shorter product cycles, are widening the gap between design requirements and the capabilities of conventional technology.
Such ineffective tools mean longer design times in markets with ever shorter product lives. Large ASIC development efforts need many more design engineers, and these are coming in very short supply.
Conventional EDA tools are now hampering a transition to systems-on-chip (SoC) designs. A new architectural and next-generation logic synthesis technology is needed that is significantly faster and has larger capacity than existing tools.
Designers need to move to a higher level of abstraction, to overcome complexity and verification issues in handling multimillion-gate RTL and architectural-level designs.
Conventional sales/distribution of EDA tools is also problematic. New ways are needed to put advanced EDA tools in front of the designers when they need them, and to charge such customers only when the EDA tools are actually used. The Internet now offers a new way to market and distribute EDA tools.
One EDA tool needs to be offered for all front-end design phases, e.g., architectural, RTL, datapath, logic. Architectural synthesis would enable true system-level design at ten times larger capacity. Faster runtimes would permit better quality-reliability (QoR) because global optimization is possible. A new EDA tool is needed with two-to-five times reduction in code and design time.
Briefly, a business-to-business application service provider embodiment of the present invention includes an Internet website and webserver with EDA-on-demand solutions for system-on-a-chip designers. Such website allows electronic designs in hardware description language to be uploaded into a front-end EDA design environment. A behavioral model simulation tool hosted privately on the webserver tests and validates the design. Such tool executes only in the secure environment of the business-to-business application service provider. The validated solution is then downloaded back over the Internet for a pay-per-use fee to the customer, in a form ready to be placed and routed by a back-end EDA tool. Such validated design solutions are also downloadable to others in exchange for other designs, or available in technology libraries. The intellectual property created can be re-used, sold, shared, exchanged, and otherwise distributed efficiently and easily from a central for-profit clearinghouse.